Hunters of waterfowl conceal themselves in a habitat suitable for hunting waterfowl and employ decoys, which have the appearance of the fowl being hunted, to attract their prey to the site. The decoys have the appearance of waterfowl standing or sitting on the ground or swimming in the water, thereby suggesting to waterfowl flying overhead that the environment is safe.
The decoys used by hunters may be either three dimensional or two dimensional. The two dimensional decoys consist of a planar material such as a plastic or fiberboard sheet cut into the profile of a duck or a goose with the sides thereof depicting a photographic or painted rendition of the bird thereon. Two dimensional decoys lay flat for easy stacking so as to consume a fraction of the space of three dimensional decoys, and waterfowl are surprisingly unsuspicious of such two dimensional decoys. The disadvantage of two dimensional decoys is that they require a mechanical support to hold the planar material on which they are depicted in an erect orientation.
The manufacturers of planar decoys provide stakes having a lower end that is sharpened, suitable for pushing into the ground and an upper end adapted for retaining the planar profile of the waterfowl decoy. Such stakes are satisfactory for use in retaining decoys in a field or the like, where the ground is firm enough to retain the stake and soft for the stake to be manually inserted. Stakes are generally unsuited, however, for use in marshy soil or for retaining a planar decoy vertically on the surface of a pond. Where stakes cannot be used to support decoys, hunters have used boards that have been cut, nailed or screwed into the configuration of a cross or a triangle to serve as a base to which vertical posts are attached for supporting planar decoys.
One of the more sophisticated devices hand made by hunters for retaining planar decoys consists of three elongate sticks pivotally mounted between a pair Of mounting boards with each of the stick pivoting on a pivot pin through one end of the sticks. When not in use, the sticks are pivoted around the pivot pins until they are parallel to each other for convenient storage. When in use, the three sticks are angularly spaced with respect to one another, preferably at 120 degrees from each other, to provide a stable support for three decoys. The wood devices were floated on the surface of a pond to display decoy on the surface of the water.
The devices made by hunters have several shortcomings. First, the three elongate arms of such devices cannot be locked into a desired configuration. For example, where the device is floated on the surface of a pond, the three arms must be maintained in a spaced orientation with respect to one another to maintain stability. In the water. If the movement of the air against the surfaces of the decoys, or the movement of the water, causes one arm to rotate until it is parallel to another, the device can roll on its side, thereby rendering it ineffective. Since the three arms are retained together at only one end, storing is also a problem. Unless a strap or rubberband is employed to retain the second ends together, the arms may open at any inopportune occasions. Also, the posts, which retain the:decoys to the free end of the arms, may be either fixedly secured to their respective arm using nails, screws, or the like, or they may be pivotally attached to the post. Where a single screw attaches the post to the arm, and the screw is not tightened the post could rotate too freely with respect to the arm, the decoy may fall into an inappropriate orientation for water fowl such that its presents no longer suggests a safe region to land. The pivotal post at the free end of the arm complicated storage problems because one or more of the pivotable posts may rotate out of parallel alignment while the device is being stored.
There are no known commercial manufactures of the devices and there is therefor a need for an improved device for mounting two dimensional waterfowl decoys.
Briefly, the present invention is embodied in a retainer for holding a plurality of waterfowl decoys. The device has at least three arms with each of the arms having a pivot end and a support end with each arm extending generally linearly from the pivot end to the support end to define a length. The device has a pivot for joining the pivot ends of the three arms for rotation about an axis such that the arms are moveable from a first orientation in which the lengths of the arms are parallel to each other for storage, to a second orientation in which the lengths of the arms are angularly spaced from one another.
One aspect of the invention is a locking means for selectively locking and unlocking the arms in either the first orientation or the second orientation, that is either with the arms locked parallel to each other, for storage, or the arms locked spaced from each other for providing a stable mounting surface for retaining planar waterfowl decoys. In accordance with this aspect of the invention, the locking means includes first and second sets of holes extending through the three arms. The arms are configured such that when the first set of holes are aligned a licking pin may be inserted through the aligned holes to retain the arms in a parallel orientation for storage. The arms are also configured such that when the second set of holes are aligned and the locking pin inserted into the second set of aligned holes the three arms will retained in a spaced orientation for stability.
Attached to the support ends of each of three arms is an elongate post having first and second ends, the first ends of which are pivotally attached to the arm and the second ends of which are adapted for retaining planar decoys thereto The pivotal mounting of the post to the arm includes a ratchet which provides resistance to the rotation of the post with respect to the arm to prevent the free end of the post from moving with respect to the arm at inopportune occasions, yet allows a hunter to manipulate the posts with respect to the arm without requiring the tightening and untightening of screws and the like.